Ruth: The Skeptic and The Saint

For me, the book is as much about Naomi and Boaz and how they respond to the hands they are dealt. Not a romance but a story of how two people salvage each other.

This is an account that could be ours today. We, like Naomi, are sometimes forced into change with new circumstances but, instead of working out the way we hope, our lives may get worse and more complicated. At some point we learn we are not protected from reality. I have read commentators who see Naomi’s difficulties the same as she does – God’s hand against her for leaving. I don’t take it that way. When there is no food or work you do what is necessary. You don’t just sit and wait. As someone said, “You start where you are.”

As harsh as it may sound there are people today who imagine everything inconvenient or even tragic as God orchestrating events for teaching them or someone else a particular lesson or for sending them a sign there is something more they need to do to be closer to him. He is punishing them for some unknown reason and his hand is against them until they find and correct it. Or, worse, he has decided for no reason to make their lives miserable and all they can do is resign themselves to it. None of it makes sense. Living that way will make you crazy. I think misfortune, disease, hardship, loss, and pain are part of living in a fallen world – and not merely lightning bolts God uses to communicate with us.  As Scott Peck says, “Life is difficult” and it is. 

But it is resignation and self-defeat that colors and defines Naomi’s life. Yes, she is bitter but not evil. She has lost hope for better prospects but does not lay down and ask, like Job, to die. Life has not been easy for her but she doesn’t quit. She is not self-destructive or angry - just skeptical and resigned to her lot in life. Hearing that things are better in Bethlehem she takes the initiative to return. Her daughter-in-law, Ruth, finds work with an unusual man given the times. He is a man who, in a country when everyone did whatever was right or convenient in their own eyes, followed the commandments. Surrounded by lawlessness, disbelief, corruption and self-serving he chose integrity. It was a time when it might well have been too difficult to remain devout and orthodox but Boaz did. For many successful people (and he was) he could have rationalized not leaving the corners of the fields for the poor but he did. 

He was not a local celebrity or detached from his workers. They blessed him and were grateful for him. He was a man of influence and some power but chose to use it in ways that drew people to him. He noticed people and protected them. There is no hint of class warfare or the 1% versus the rest. He is not the rich fool in Luke, the ambitious levite in Judges or the privileged man we are warned about in James. He is a man who remembers where he came from - the son of the prostitute Rahab - and that is the source of his generosity. He is also an older man alone.

Ruth is the skeptic and Boaz the saint.

We all know the story of her subtle plan and how it gives her a glimmer of hope. She revives while concocting her creative snare for this good man. It works and at the end is the beautiful picture of a changed Naomi. “A son has been born to Naomi. He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age.” A son for Naomi? Yes, just as much as a son for Ruth and Boaz for it is a story beginning with Naomi’s loss and ending with her gain. It begins with death and ends with birth. It begins in a famine and ends with a feast. While there are all manner of obstacles, disappointments and sorrows along the way, the end is redemption for each of the three.

It’s not only that they lived happily ever after for as often happens in Scripture there is the beginning of yet another and larger story generations later with the birth of their descendant David and ultimately Jesus. The same may be true for you. The long and winding, sometimes disappointing and difficult road of your life is not only about the here and now but it is leading to something larger and more glorious generations ahead in the future.

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Art by Peter Mitchev

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